Norris surprised by McLaren's early pace: 'It was difficult'

The Brit did not think that the gap towards the rest of the grid would be as big as it actually turned out to be, but once the chequered flag fell on qualifying, he set the fastest lap of the session, much further ahead than the other teams around the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne.

It was a pretty flawless session for the McLaren team, with Norris grabbing the pole position and teammate Oscar Piastri qualifying in second place. On Sunday, they will be under attack from Max Verstappen, who qualified right behind them in P3.

McLaren exceeded expectations

After qualifying, Norris was asked if he expected in advance that McLaren would be so strong during qualifying: "We've been confident just because our expectation is, as much as we want to dominate and actually have a result like we've just had, it really was not necessarily our expectation to have a bit of a gap to the rest of the cars. And when I say have a gap. I mean, when we put the lap in, we did have a bit of a gap, but it has been difficult."

Norris explained that one of the biggest challenges McLaren faced this weekend was getting everything right and getting it together during the qualifying laps: "To have that kind of pace we had today was not unexpected, but we were not going in thinking, 'Okay, we're going to have two-tenths over everyone, or one and a half tenths.' Whatever it was. So we know we have a good car, mainly because I know I have a very good team around me, and everyone back at McLaren and MTC has done an incredible job, clearly, to keep the car going from last season and improve in as many areas as possible."

The decisive lap for pole

About his pole lap, he said, "It was good enough, I guess. It was tricky because of my first lap, going off track, and just with how tight it's been, especially with Oscar. But yeah, it's a tough one, because you want to take a lot of risks, especially on this track. It's a track you have got to commit, and you have got to know what your target is, and once you've turned in, you're kind of hoping for the best in a lot of cases. So it's one where you wanna take those risks. Obviously, I took too many on my first lap and I got track limits, so I was in a difficult position to know how much risk I wanted to take. But I put it together well. I couldn't make any mistakes, and that was enough. So I'm happy. I mean, a perfect way to start the season."

This article was created in collaboration with Kim Hoefnagel

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